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Sunday, November 18, 2012

THE FOLLOWING IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY... Did I ever tell you about the time I died? Yeah, probably not. That's a good setup for a story though, right? I have told this story before. For the sake of those involved I omitted some of the more bizarre elements, but as the years have gone by I have come to realize that the full details must be made known. What if the unexplained incident that occurred that St. Patrick's Day in downtown Savannah were to be repeated elsewhere? It's irresponsible to withhold what little I know of it, especially in light of the fact that no one else seems to remember. This is the story of how all Hell broke loose one night in Savannah, how the end of the world was very nearly the result of it, and how I was put in a position to stop it just by deciding to stay home.

In this first excerpt, I introduce the story and talk about my ill-fated bid for President. No zombies yet, but they're coming.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Sean, Greg, Brooks and Andrew return to continue their discussion of the Disney Star Wars purchase. What could this mean for Indiana Jones? Could an Indy reboot be in our future? And what a Star Wars theme park? Could EPCOT become Star Wars Land? And what's up with Netflix? Why is everything always on Very Long Wait now?

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Apocalypse Party by Sean Gilbert is the basically mostly kind of true story about how Sean and his intrepid friends were forced to save the world one year when the St. Patrick's Day festival in Savannah almost turned into a zombie alien apocalypse. Here's the dust jacket synopsis:

THE FOLLOWING IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY...

Did I ever tell you about the time I died?

Yeah, probably not. That's a good setup for a story though, right?

I have told this story before. For the sake of those involved I omitted some of the more bizarre elements, but as the years have gone by I have come to realize that the full details must be made known. What if the unexplained incident that occurred that St. Patrick's Day in downtown Savannah were to be repeated elsewhere? It's irresponsible to withhold what little I know of it, especially in light of the fact that no one else seems to remember.

This is the story of how all Hell broke loose one night in Savannah, how the end of the world was very nearly the result of it, and how I was put in a position to stop it just by deciding to stay home.

Read it. You might like it. It's mostly weird and kind of stupid and at least a little bit true.

And the profits go to a good cause. Almost all the proceeds go right to Sean, who on occasion uses his resources to save the world.

Monday, November 12, 2012

I'm very excited to see the return of Daniel Craig's James Bond, and Skyfall is a worthy contribution to the franchise.

It's not quite as sophisticated as its predecessors, and without throwing any spoilers out there I will go over a few of the story elements that take away from it. This installment is definitely focused on positioning, since the story is driving Bond back to his roots. It rides a fine line between classic and cliche' in the process, but I think overall the film works. There's a lot of typical Bond fare like babes, cars and cheesy supervillains, but it plays out with a little more dimension than the average Roger Moore adventure. Javier Bardem is a classic bad guy, channeling the Joker from the Dark Knight to give Bond a crazy foil to square off against. But he's worthy to the task and fun to watch even though his master plan is riddled with holes that can't be explained away by simply saying "he's crazy".

I won't go into those details, but the premise of the story is that a cyberterrorist steals a laptop hard drive that for no good reason has the names of every undercover agent embedded in terrorist organizations all around the world. Why that hard drive exists at all is a mystery to me, but the even greater mystery is why they don't pull those agents out the second the hard drive is compromised. Instead Bond is accidentally shot in an effort to take out the thief and left for dead, which happens before the opening credits, so again I say that's no spoiler. The story follows a flimsy thread where they are motivated by a threat that 5 names a week will be revealed from the list, but again the agents should have been removed from harm the moment the hard drive was taken so you don't really feel the suspense you should feel. This and other threats serve as Bond's motivation to return to the job, and again provide a somewhat thin premise for the film.

The movie returns Bond to his more familiar formula, which is fun even though it takes away from the effort of previous installments to do something new with the character. The action is awesome in the movie despite some over the top moments like a run-in with computer-generated Komodo Dragons. There is also an effort to explore the character's origins, which is interesting, but the story plays out as a series of strung-together set pieces that are fun vignettes by themselves but don't completely work in connection to each other.

Overall, I enjoyed "Skyfall" and I think the movie delivers as promised, but I hope future installments work harder to keep the mission instead of trying to bring Bond back to his glory days.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

If you ever wondered what it would take to bring Brooks out of retirement, this is it. Sean, Brooks, Greg and Andrew convene for an emergency session of TVAMD to talk about the Earth-shattering announcement that Disney purchased Star Wars. What does it mean? Who would direct Episode VII? How do we get Nathan Fillion in it? Part 1 just barely scratches the surface, folks...

Saturday, November 10, 2012

What do you want from Disney's Star Wars sequel? With Episode VII slotted for 2015, who should be in it? What should it be about? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I think we definitely need a new villain. There always has to be a dark jedi element, but the prequels prove that the story fails when it's too Jedi-centric.

You could do a story where the remnants of the Empire break up into factions the alliance has to deal with, but that's going back to the well. What they need is a new story for a new generation. The original characters need to be on hand to help the new ones deal with the threat and ultimately pass the torch for them.

I like the idea of the story focusing on Han and Leia's kids, with Luke as mentor. But I don't want them to draw from the expanded universe of the novels and comics because that limits their choices.

Here's something from the old Han Solo novels they could do: Han used to square off against this organized crime syndicate that even the Empire wouldn't touch. In the chaos following the fall of the Empire those elements like the Hutts could come to power and be something that need to be dealt with.

As for the Jedi element, I wouldn't mind a quest to discover some ancient jedi hoodad like the Kaiburr crystal or something. I always thought that was a neat idea.

Yeah, and now that Disney owns Star Wars and Marvel, I'm just going to say what everyone's thinking: Hoojibs.